Ruby Intuition

What to Expect From a Reading

First and foremost I connect your conscious, daily self—the self who pays the phone bill and wonders if that guy is ever going to call back and if you turned off the stove and, well, you fill in the blanks—with your “true self,” what some people refer to as the soul. The part of us that we typically only connect to first thing in the morning or in our dreams. In an intuitive reading, I help you develop a more daily way to connect to who you really are.

Before our meeting, find a notebook you like and think a little about what you’d like to focus on. Send me your birth information (time, day, location). Schedule a little time to regroup afterward, a “buffer zone” between you and the world that you’re stepping back into on new terms.

When we meet, we will discuss your intent and/or question(s) and then I will begin to share the responses I received—using tarot cards, astrological data and other impressions and information.

Although quite often I gain insight into your past and future, that is not the central focus of my intuitive readings. Details about your past, present, and possible future arrive to expand your understanding of your life right now––of your challenges and strengths, of the circumstances and people around you. Sometimes it may be details you have forgotten and sometimes it may be details about what might happen, although I believe that our future is constantly changing based on every choice we make. The tarot cards and astrological data help but often the most important information shows up while I am just tuning in to you. What emerges is your best path and how to align with it.

Facts

A reading lasts about an hour and takes place at a Brooklyn location. I also can conduct them by phone although in-person sessions are recommended whenever possible. Please note that I have a 24-hour cancellation policy.

How I Became an Intuitive

I grew up in Massachusetts, the descendent of a long line of Scottish and Sioux factory workers who could tell you who was calling long before caller ID was invented. The women on my mother’s side always could see what some call “auras” but my family referred to as “colors around the head.” Often, nonchalantly, they reported ghost sightings. As the nerdier kid in the family who did well in school, I assumed that I was too much in my head to possess the same gifts, and was secretly relieved.

It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized that I’d always had access to a lot more information than the average person. In dreams and just in impressions that came to me, I often saw things before they happened or knew where a person was from or what their parents were like or even what medicine they were taking. Sometimes people who’d died came to me in dreams to tell me things that I had no other way of knowing. To this day, I believe in what I call the “intuition spectrum.” I think everyone possesses a natural intuition that they rarely access because technology has long supplanted its use. It’s just that for whatever reason the women in my family still actively access that intuition, the way other families might produce really fast runners or unusually high abilities to calculate large sums.

Certainly, I did not set out to be a professional intuitive. I’ve always been curious but naturally skeptical. My dad is a computer science professor and he taught me to methodically sift through information. So I studied at the Integral Yoga ashram and with the astrologers and intuitives Virginia Bell, Maryann Russell, and Darlene Troiano, the mystics Alysia Tromblay and Jill Purce, and with Matthew Fox and Rupert Sheldrake, who have written extensively about the connection between science and spirituality–– but only after I received a degree in English literature and political philosophy with a concentration in gender/feminist studies from Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges, which emphasize the Quaker values of respect and accountability in a way that has impacted my entire world view.

When I first came to New York City it was to be a labor organizer in homage to my family’s background. It became apparent, though, as I kept sneaking out of demonstrations to attend afternoon movies, that I was better suited to cultural commentating. Since 2000 I have worked as a Brooklyn-based film critic for such publications and networks as Salon.com, Time Out New York, Flavorwire,Marie Claire, the IFC, NY1, and Us Weekly. It is a job I always have felt incredibly lucky to do.

But I always have been clairvoyant, and that skill has only grown stronger over the years until it began to leak out in ways that were often funny but embarrassing. Once I ruined a dinner party by asking a woman I’d just met if she’d told her husband about the affair she was having only to realize she hadn’t told me about it. It was around then that I decided to formally build an intuitive practice as I needed an ethical, constructive outlet for my abilities. And more to the point, I realized that writing about culture and conducting intuitive sessions aren’t that different. In each pursuit I translate people back to themselves whether it’s through tarot cards or through the vehicle of art and culture. Both jobs are about serving as a medium. All of it is about easing up the human condition.